


I Know You Want Me (To Want You)

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Awkwardness, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mild Language, Summer, not by the characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 08:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10158203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: All streams find their way to the sea, or something. Joshua is stuck in a world with no such big picture.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i know there are stereotypes abt drug use in small towns but that's not what this is, it's just based on an actual small town where my friend is from
> 
> also in this small town homophobia does not exist. the miracle of fiction

Riding his bike through town, Joshua can point out all the most popular locales for meth-related activities. There’s the pitiful light post in front of the gas station where most go to make a purchase, there’s the weird empty lot behind the other gas station where people can be spotted a lot at night, and there’s also the essentially abandoned park on the far side of town behind an elementary school that closed down six years ago. The alcove under the slide at that park is particularly popular with the kids at his high school, and he’s sure if he were even halfway willing to bike by it right now, he’d see a group there, huddling to squeeze themselves under the tiny patch of shade without touching while they have their fun.

Far be it from Joshua to be interested in meth, but he doesn’t exactly blame any of them. Summers in a town where the total population barely scrapes at four digits aren’t exactly notorious for being too exciting. The closest semblance to having fun would be taking a trip to the Super Walmart in the next town over—it has working air conditioning and about five hundred aisles of things nobody needs—but given it’s a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and Joshua is sweating before he even has the front door open, he figures trying to bike there will probably end very tragically, with him completely dead on the side of the road before he’s even made it halfway.

What he usually ends up doing is visiting Soonyoung at work. He’s not sure how he managed to do it, but somehow, Soonyoung landed a job at the new Baskin Robbins when it opened last August, which means he gets paid to stand in the only building with decent air conditioning within a fifteen mile radius. The only con is that it’s packed literally all the time, but there are even pros to that; for example, Joshua can blend into the crowd, and then Soonyoung can’t call him out for relieving himself from the heat under the mere guise of “visiting my best friend in the whole world.”

As usual, it’s teeming with folks today. The line is seven people long when Joshua chains his bike up outside, and he can see most of the tables inside are filled with people savoring their ice cream and their time in the cool. It hits him like a wall when he walks in, a solid block of air that doesn’t feel like its goal is to roast him alive, and he’s certain this is the closest anyone can get to entering heaven without dying first. He plops down in one of the last remaining free seats and watches Soonyoung take orders with a bright smile plastered on his face. Everyone is so desperate for their icy treats he could probably get away with acting less happy, but he still treats every customer like they’re his favorite. It probably has something to do with the healthy-looking tip jar next to the register, but Joshua likes to let himself believe Soonyoung is just one of the nicest guys alive.

“Hey,” comes Soonyoung’s voice after a while. “Degenerate over there who pretends to be my friend only when it benefits him. Air conditioning is for paying customers only.” Joshua turns his head to find Soonyoung leaning over the counter beside the register, chin in hand, mischievous light in his eyes.

“I was waiting for the line to die down,” Joshua lies casually. Soonyoung waves his other hand in front of him and wiggles his fingers.

“As you can see, it’s very dead,” he taunts, “so now’s as great a time as any to come up here and make your purchase.” Reluctantly and with a completely undisguised sigh, Joshua pushes himself up from his chair and wanders slowly to the counter, eyes glued to the menu on the wall above Soonyoung’s head.

“Do you have anything that’s, like, fruity instead of creamy?”

“You’re looking at the menu,” Soonyoung squawks. “You tell me.”

“Shut up,” Joshua grumbles, fishing out his wallet even though he hasn’t decided on anything yet. “You work here. Isn’t the menu tattooed inside your eyelids or something?” Soonyoung groans.

“We have smoothies and fruit blasts,” he says at last.

“A smoothie sounds good,” Joshua says thoughtfully, tilting his gaze down to Soonyoung’s face. “What flavors are there?”

“Mango banana, strawberry banana, and tropical banana.” Joshua scrunches his nose and warps his mouth into a tiny frown.

“I don’t like bananas.”

“That’s not my fault,” Soonyoung informs him with faux congeniality.

“Why is it that you’re nice to every customer but me?”

“Other customers actually come here to buy things,” he shoots back without hesitation, ringing something up hastily on the POS. “I’m gonna make you something I think you’ll like, but I’m not gonna tell you what it’s called so you’ll only be able to order it again if you learn how to read the menu.”

“What do I owe you?”

“I’m paying for it so I don’t have to give you the receipt,” Soonyoung dismisses. “You’ll never be a decent customer without my coercion.”

“How generous.”

“I know,” Soonyoung sighs, casting a dreamy gaze at the ceiling. “What did you ever do to deserve a winning guy like me as your best and only friend?”

Joshua rolls his eyes. “I’m going back to my seat.”

He’s not there for a minute before Soonyoung is calling him back up to the counter to fetch his beverage. The first thing he does is take a sip, and Soonyoung was right that he would like it. It’s smooth and fruity and also bright orange, and for the first half second after he swallows his initial gulp, he’s almost foolish enough to ask Soonyoung what it’s called, but one glance at the smug grin on his face reminds him of the whole reason he got a mystery drink in the first place.

“So?” he asks expectantly.

“It’s good,” Joshua confesses quietly, gulping down another mouthful like a desert does with rain.

“Hopefully good enough for you to learn to read a menu.”

“When do you get off today?” Joshua asks instead of letting him continue with his berating. Soonyoung narrows his eyes but lets the subject drop regardless.

“Not for four more hours,” he says, still dubious. “Why?”

“I’m bored,” Joshua whines. “If I have to sweat to death, I wanna at least do it playing video games at your house.” Soonyoung scoffs without delay.

“Don’t lie right to my face,” he says. “You’re just starting to feel like a creep, I bet, but you’re totally still gonna go watch him swim in the creek again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joshua lies. A flash of tan back is already under his eyelids, and Soonyoung probably knows that it is and wanted to put it there on purpose, bursts into a sly smile that squeezes his eyes into smarmy crescents. Joshua’s least favorite look on him.

“You’re so full of shit,” Soonyoung hisses. “I’ve caught you before, remember?” He taps a fingernail on the cold plastic cup in Joshua’s hands. “We both know the second you finish this, you’re gonna go back outside and hop on your bike and go to the creek and set up shop behind that big old oak tree to watch Min—”

“Don’t say his name!” Joshua squeaks, and Soonyoung laughs loud enough that the family of four enjoying their single scoop cones at the farthest table back all jump in surprise. The toddling age little boy lets out the beginning of a scared wail before his mother administers a flurry of consoling pats to his tiny head and pushes his lips back to the little mound of vanilla slowly melting onto his fingers.

“Fine,” Soonyoung concedes. “Since I’m oh-so-gracious, I won’t.” Joshua’s not confident enough in his ability to do damage to punch Soonyoung in the face right now, and he also isn’t itching to be barred from entering the coldest building in town when it’s 98 degrees outside, but god, does he want to do it anyway. A bell dings behind him and makes him remember that other people exist in the world, and most of them want ice cream when it’s hot. “Welcome to Baskin Robbins!” Soonyoung croons, shooing Joshua away from the counter, and Joshua returns to his seat to make way for the crowd of thirteen pouring through the door.

It’s true. There’s a boy from their school who swims in the creek a lot, and Joshua sometimes happens to spot him doing it, and maybe he sometimes happens to lean his bike against that tree and sit under the patchy shade and watch. It’s not creepy, he reminds himself through gritted teeth every time. If he doesn’t want anybody to see him, he should go swim in a creek that’s _not_ right next to the fourteenth-busiest road in the county. Joshua’s rational half knows how flimsy that argument is, but he’s too bored and infatuated to dismantle it.

Soonyoung is right, as usual. When Joshua finishes his beverage, he walks back out into the oven that is the outside world and takes a tenacious seat on his bicycle, flips up the kickstand, and starts on his journey to the creek. He can tell while he snakes up the sidewalk that the boy is already there, sees his shirt discarded on the grass and his head bobbing up with occasional splashes. Joshua refuses to call him anything but vague terms like “that guy” in his head even though he knows his name—and truthfully, how could he not when their school is smaller than some people’s immediate families?—because putting a name on him makes him more like a person, and that makes all the staring a lot weirder. And he is a person and it is weird, but Joshua wants to at least not think about it.

He doesn’t know why it’s so relaxing to watch someone else swim in water that he knows is too hot to be helping against the heat, but somehow, it is. Joshua leans his back against the tree, pressing himself close to the bark while the little patch of shade recedes with the day’s passing. A light breeze drifts by, often enough to be noted but infrequently enough to be unhelpful, lapping at Joshua’s cheeks and rustling his hair. His vision starts to blur while he keeps his eye out for the splashes in the creek, blues of the cloudless sky start to meld down in to the sticky green of the grass, the mucky brown of the mud where the stream meanders, and just before it all goes to black, Joshua thinks to hope that he doesn’t get a sunburn.

When he wakes up, everything is red and stifling, and for a split second, he thinks he’s died of overheating and gone straight to hell for being the worst kind of people watcher, wishes he could somehow revive and put himself on a path of righteousness and dying in his own bedroom doing the highly dreaded summer reading. It quickly becomes apparent that the red and suffocating heat aren’t coming from the chambers of the underworld but instead a shirt that found its way onto Joshua’s head while he was dozing. The second he’s yanked it off, he wants to shove his face right back in.

“Hey, Joshua,” drawls a honey smile, bright white teeth and cherry lips. Joshua doesn’t think he’s talked to him directly more than five times over the course of three years, and his voice is honey like his smile. Maybe it’s something in the creek; his skin is honey, too, from his cheeks down to his neck and over his shoulders, his chest, stomach, and this must be his fucking shirt in Joshua’s sweaty palms, deep red as his face definitely is.

“Hi, Mingyu,” he croaks, and his nameless fortress of glass crumbles to shards. Mingyu’s smile is so sweet it’s almost a little menacing, so warm it starts to burn. His hand creeps to Joshua’s and gently tugs the bundle of red back into his possession.

“I saw you sleeping, so I covered you with my shirt so you wouldn’t get a sunburn,” he explains.

“Oh. Thanks.” Joshua waits for him to put the shirt back on, but he wads it up further and sets it on the grass next to his legs. His skin glistens like something otherworldly, golden drops of sun dancing off hairs bleached by nature, and it’s bizarrely mesmerizing to see, a ray of sun personified. A quiet breeze ruffles damp locks of black hair.

“Hey,” Mingyu juts in without warning, frowning, “my eyes are up here.” He slings an arm across his chest. “Quit staring at my boys.”

“…I’m sorry?” _His boys?_ Mingyu bursts into raucous laughter before Joshua has a long enough time to think about it.

“I’m just joking. If it bugged me, I’d put my shirt on. It’s too hot for that, though.” He heaves a sigh, whistling through his nose. “I can’t believe you falling asleep finally has us talking to each other.”

“Finally?”

“You know,” Mingyu says, waving his hand around in the direction of the water. “Usually I’m just down there swimming and you’re up here pretending not to watch me swim, but now we’re, like, in the same place.”

“I don’t watch you swim,” Joshua blurts, loud and defensive. He realizes immediately after his outburst that there’s no point if Mingyu already knows or even suspects, but it’s too late to retrace his words. Mingyu fixes him with a strange grin.

“Does Soonyoung believe that?” he asks. Joshua closes his eyes and releases a long breath. Obviously not, he thinks, and neither should you. The wind that comes by now is a little stronger, tickles his cheeks and stirs the hair starting to clump against his forehead.

“No,” he says at last, and Mingyu laughs again. Wind chimes dance in his vocal cords. Joshua reopens his eyes and is certain that Mingyu’s face is a lot closer and also that he’s going to have a heart attack.

“It’s fine,” Mingyu tells him. “I mean, I don’t mind. Really.”

“Really?” The tree’s bark is digging into Joshua’s back hard enough to be leaving marks, but he feels like he’ll die if he leans forward even an inch. “Why not? It’s weird.”

“I guess, maybe, but it doesn’t bug me.” He rakes a hand through his slowly drying hair and brings it back to rest behind him on the grass. “If it did, I could just swim somewhere else, or I could’ve said something to you about it before. But the water is coldest at this part of the creek, and I don’t care enough.”

“Ah.” He never stops grinning, does he? Joshua doesn’t think the corners of his mouth have dropped at all since he first opened his eyes, and they’re still maintaining that beaming smile, nice and strong, cheeks full and pink. Doesn’t his face ever get tired?

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, actually,” Mingyu confesses, stretching his leg out to toe at the base of the tree. Small scraping sounds drift over from where his foot prods at the rough bark. “Is there any specific reason you watch me swim, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua says after a moment’s thought. “I’m really bored and there’s nothing to do. It’s kind of relaxing.” _You’re gorgeous._ He casually omits that part.

“Why don’t you come swim with me?” he asks. It’s a very simple invitation if Joshua’s smart enough not to read anything into it. “I promise it’s more fun than just sitting over here.”

“I don’t want to,” Joshua says plainly, scrunching his nose. “That creek is nasty, and I don’t want to get my shorts wet.”

“It’s not that bad,” Mingyu tells him with an eye roll. “And you can wear trunks.”

“I still don’t want to.” For a second, Mingyu’s smile quivers down into something more like a flat line, but it springs back up quickly, mischievous and sly.

“Be honest,” he says. Joshua doesn’t like the look of where his tone is leading them. “You think I’m hot, right?” Joshua chokes on the humid July air and almost drowns in it. Sweat starts beading on him in new droplets, and he knows well enough it’s more than just the heat.

“Excuse me?” he wheezes, loud and outraged, startling a squirrel scurrying across the ground a few yards away. Denying too fiercely is suspicious and he knows it, but it’s hard not to when it’s such a bummer to be seen through that easily. Mingyu takes it as an answer.

“You do, don’t you?” He folds his legs and pulls himself closer while he does, eager and sparkling. No matter how much Joshua wishes he could melt back into the trunk of this tree and disappear, it’s solid as ever. “Tell the truth. Do you want to kiss me?”

“Do _you_ want to kiss _me_?” Joshua crows in reply because he’s panicking and everything is happening too quickly for him to come up with a good way to lie and say no. If only he’d listened to Soonyoung that time he told him to take up a decent hobby like knitting or geocaching. Now he’s screwed in so many ways he hasn’t got the time to count and Mingyu is still staring at him with big eyes, like a little kid but less innocently cute and way more daunting.

“I’ve thought about it,” he admits, and Joshua does not attempt to disguise his shock. “You have nice lips. And a pretty face.” He keeps mulling it over, and Joshua’s ears aren’t sure they’re ready for him to say anything else. “Your voice is really nice, too. Soft.” His smile gets more charming in that instant, more of an answer and less of a question. “I think it would be good.”

“Are you saying,” he manages not to gasp, but only just barely, “you want to?”

“I am.” He leans close, and the sound of a car cruising by on the road hits Joshua’s ears ten times louder than normal. “Do you want me to want to?” Closer still. Their noses are a hair from touching. “Would you let me?”

Another car passes by. “No,” Joshua whispers. Mingyu’s ears perk up, eyes flit in the direction of the road.

“Is it because someone might see us?” he says back instead of whispering like Joshua feels like he needs to. Joshua nods, silent, and his throat is full of sandpaper when Mingyu stays exactly where he is, melting holes with his eyes in the softest parts of Joshua’s everything. “You know, the fourteenth busiest road in the county doesn’t exist on the other side of the creek.”

“You want to go to the other side?” Mingyu nods. “Really?” He nods again. “Do you actually want to kiss me?”

“I do ever since you brought it up,” he says, “and I really do think you feel something like that, too. We’re only young once, Josh.” He reaches forward without warning to rest his palm over Joshua’s stomach, fingers drumming through the light t-shirt. Heartbeats are amazing in their ability to go from the speed of sound to the speed of light instantaneously. “Act with your gut instead of your head.” Considering his gut is telling him to throw up from nerves, he’d really rather not, but he does find a shaky way to his feet.

Mingyu leads them into the water over the sticky bank of mud, and Joshua can already hear his mom yelling at him, but it’s too late once he’s in up to his knees and the ends of his shorts are darkening with moisture. “The middle is a little rough,” Mingyu says as they wade out. “You should hold my hand,” he continues, and he extends it patiently behind him.

“Really?” Joshua asks. He doesn’t believe it, but he threads his fingers through Mingyu’s anyway. It’s too hot to hold hands.

“No,” he calls back, impish, and they’re through the middle moments later, completely without hassle. “It was just a trick to get you to hold my hand.” Joshua sighs. “You know, gotta make sure you don’t abandon me and run away.”

“Is there a point now?” Joshua’s clothes are already soaked up to his chest after the deepest spot. It’s going to be uncomfortable no matter which side of the creek he gets out on. Mingyu chuckles, hearty and full, enough to make Joshua wish he had never been born, and the hand in his squeezes tighter.

“Good point.”

The opposite side of the creek is swampy, thinner grass and thicker mud, and it’s overrun with weeds and fat trees, stout trunks with huge clusters of leaves casting shadows on everything. Mingyu keeps leading, takes them back past the first few fronts of trees until everything is dark and it’s a few beautiful degrees cooler. Somehow, he still reflects the sun back at itself from deep in the shade.

“So,” Mingyu hums, “here we are.”

“Here we are,” Joshua agrees. Cicadas scream everywhere around them, hectic background music that fills the silence but doesn’t put him at ease. Mingyu snorts, casts his gaze to his bare feet.

“This is awkward,” he decides, smile present regardless. “I know it was my idea, but it’s so awkward.”

“Yeah,” Joshua agrees, “it really is.” He jumps out of his skin when Mingyu’s hand jumps back to his, fingers start toying with his pinky. His eyes come back, too, twinkling, deep.

“We’re still doing this,” he clarifies, “even though it’s awkward. I have it in my head now, so we have to.”

“Okay. That’s fine.” Joshua waits for a while longer, but Mingyu doesn’t do anything, just keeps worrying the pinky between his fingertips. He’ll wear the joints away if he keeps it up for too much longer. “Are you going to do it or not?”

“You can do it if you’re so impatient,” Mingyu guffaws. Joshua groans.

“I can’t. I’m too chicken.”

“At least you admit it.”

“Shut up.”

“After weeks of silently pining after me and my hot bod from under that oak tree…”

“ _Shut up_ , I said.”

A soft chuckle ghosts through Mingyu’s lips, and then his hand is moving, sliding away from Joshua’s pinky and snaking slowly up his arm, taking short breaks as it goes. Joshua is very scared to breathe, but he doesn’t want to die on this side of the creek. Everyone’s just going to wonder what in hell he was doing over here in the first place, and that won’t do because Soonyoung will definitely have a hunch.

“Okay.” Mingyu reaches his shoulder after years, palm hot and heavy and sticky with sweat, and he brings his other hand to cup Joshua under the chin and lift it a little bit. It’s sort of like they do it in movies, but way sweatier and much more embarrassing. “Are you ready?”

“Rip the bandaid off,” Joshua tells him. Mingyu frowns.

“Don’t say that like I’m _punishing_ you.”

“I think the entire universe is punishing me,” Joshua laments.

Instead of delivering the quip that must have been on the tip of Mingyu’s tongue, he pulls himself forward and transfers it to the tip of Joshua’s instead. Before his head catches up, his back is being pushed up against a new and unfamiliar tree, and the hand that had been on his chin is climbing dangerously under his shirt. His hands would probably do the same if Mingyu had a shirt on at all, but he doesn’t, so they resign to clinging for dear life onto everything his fingers have the strength to grab and his palms aren’t too slick to slide off. It’s way too hot for this, but it’s also not hot enough to stop, and Joshua’s head is lighter than the air that’s clinging to their skin by far. The cicadas are loud around them, loud enough to drown out the sounds of passing cars back on the side of the creek they abandoned, but nowhere near the volume needed to soften the pounds of Joshua’s heart, trapped inside a chest with too little room. Mingyu’s hand slips from Joshua’s shoulder to his neck, and he hopes to god it doesn’t burn off like he thinks it’s going to, but he’s only half sure it doesn’t.

The sun is lower in the sky when they make the trek back across the creek, re-ruining perfectly dried clothes. Joshua is in the middle of thinking about how there better not have been any poison ivy when he spots a familiar copper sedan parked in a slant at the side of the field in front of them. Moving his eyes over, he spots a figure, too, wearing a lovely Baskin Robbins apron and a shit-eating grin, fist clutching a balled-up red shirt.

“Have fun, did we?” Soonyoung calls as they walk up, firmly fixed in his cross-legged position on the ground. He gets no less smug the closer they come, and Joshua wishes not for the first time that he could have fallen into a coma for the day.

“What are you doing here?” he shouts. Mingyu laughs something quiet beside him.

“I figured I’d come check on my very good friend,” he says, haughty from beneath his visor, “and what do I find but your poor, abandoned bike, ripe for the stealing, and this lonely shirt that’s much too big for you?” He twirls the shirt around in the air like a banner or a trophy, then tosses it back to Mingyu, who very conspicuously fails to catch. “So I decided to stick around. Hey, Mingyu.”

“Hey.” Joshua opens his mouth to say something, but words evade him, so all it does is hang open, silent and foolish.

Soonyoung springs to his feet and dusts himself off, keys jingling when he takes them out of his pocket. “Well,” he says, “I think I already know what you two were up to, so I may as well leave. Want a ride home, Mingyu?”

“Dude, totally.”

“I want a ride home,” Joshua whines. Soonyoung points his nose to the sky, hands firmly on his hips, and cackles until he starts tearing up.

“No,” he says at last. “You have a bike. Come on, Mingyu.”

“I’ll text you,” Mingyu says.

“You don’t have my number,” Joshua reminds him, frowning.

“I’ll give it to him,” Soonyoung interrupts, picking up his pace dramatically and urging Mingyu to do the same. “See you later, Josh!”

As Joshua watches the vehicle speed down the two-lane road at the blazing speed of betrayal, he mourns everything that has made his life what it is right now. He mourns this stupid tiny town and this stupid heat. He mourns Soonyoung and that cursed Baskin Robbins. He mourns this dumb bike and the unruly cracks in the sidewalk that almost send him flying headfirst into the asphalt on his journey home. But when he gets there, sees his phone that’s been sitting on the charger all day blinking with a new message, he stops mourning. He picks it up, carefully unlocks it, reads the message three times over, and sets aside a small pocket of his heart where he doesn’t mourn Mingyu.

**Author's Note:**

> WHOO BOY i had this idea a while ago and i'm a slacker and a heathen so i decided to actually write it. i hope u enjoy it if u read! this pairing deserves so much better!  
> i have class tomorrow and it's late so that's all i've got to say byyyyyyyyyyyye thanks for readingggggggggggg  
> as always, feedback is greatly appreciated!


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